This invention relates to apparatus for scraping away a coating over numbers or other symbols on a game ticket of the sort used in many lotteries.
Many lotteries or other organizations sell or distribute card stock tickets having numbers or other symbols printed on one side, with the symbols coated with an opaque coating. The coating can be removed by scraping with a key, coin or the like to reveal the symbols. The symbols may directly indicate whether or not a prize has been won, or may be compared to publicized winning numbers.
While these tickets are convenient and protected against fraud, scraping or scratching off the coating is inconvenient and messy, often leaving shreds and crumbs of the coating material littering the areas, such as convenience stores, where the are sold. Completely removing the coating takes some time, and care must be exercised in removing only the coating and not removing or damaging the symbols.
A number of devices of varying effectiveness have been developed to aid in removing the coating. These range from simple manual scrapers in which a scraping edge is manually brought into contact with the coating while the ticket is pulled past the edge, as typically described by Rizzo in U.S. Pat. No. 4,793,061 to large, complex electrically powered devices, using a rotating brush or the like to scrape away the coating as typically described by Forrest in U.S. Pat. No. 5,402,549. With the simple device of Rizzo, the plastic scraper blade will wear rapidly and great care must be used in scraping to remove only the coating and not damage the underlying symbols. On the other hand, the Forrest device is large and expensive, must be carefully aligned to remove only the coating, and is likely to damage the symbols if the ticket should jam in contact with the rotating brush.
Other manual scrapers are described by Fox in U.S. Pat. No. 5,419,004 and Diba et al. in U.S. Pat. No. 4,777,693. These also require careful application of just the correct amount of pressure on a scraping blade assembly to fully remove the coating while avoiding damage to the symbols. There is no way of adjusting scraping pressure other than the skill of the operator. Further, as the scrapper dulls, greater pressure is likely to be applied, increasing chances of damaging the symbols, a serious consequence if the ticket is a winner. Where a guide is provided, no provision is made for adjusting the guide to compensate for wear. Also, it is often difficult to start the leading ticket edge past the scraper, resulting in buckling of the ticket edge requiring the user to resort to a coin or fingernail to remove the coating.
Other motor driven scrapers are described by Clark in U.S. Pat. No. 5,253,383 and Sanders et al. in U.S. Pat. No. 4,765,842. These also are relatively expensive, require the provision of batteries or connection to mains and require the ticket to be carefully fed past a rotating cleaning brush so as to completely remove the coating to fully remove the coating without damaging the symbols. While most scraping devices include some means for collecting the coating shreds, often these are not fully effective, allowing some of the material to remain with the ticket, resulting in littering of the area.
Thus, there is a continuing need for improved devices for removing coatings from lottery or other game tickets which fully remove the coating without risk of damaging the symbol printing, which capture and store essentially all of the removed coating material, which are compact and inexpensive, have a long-lasting scraping edge and which are easily and fully adjustable to allow easy access of the ticket into the scraper while providing the ideal scraping pressure.